Congressman Anthony Weiner is Jewish! On the positive side he has been a strong advocate for Israel and for liberal social values. But in the last few weeks we Jews have not been thinking of those accomplishments. We have instead said to ourselves — “he is Jewish. Drat!” It is so embarrassing and disappointing when someone Jewish is in the public eye for improprieties. We can just hear the anti-Semites of the world saying “see — I told you ... you can’t trust those people!”
As Jews we are proud when other Jews win a Nobel prize or are recognized for outstanding achievements in the world. And this happens pretty frequently — thank goodness. In fact it happens a lot more often than a Bernie Madoff or a Weiner. But in recent times some of the Jews who have fouled up have fouled up big — like the two I just mentioned. And when this happens we fear how it reflects on all Jews.
But it should bother us for another reason! We should be concerned not just for how it appears, but for what it says about that person. If we truly strive to be people of high integrity then we are disappointed when a Jew does something so wrong because he or she has not acted in a Godly way. He or she has fallen far from the ideals of our religion.
Golda Meir once said “I thought that a Jewish state would be free from the evils afflicting other societies: theft, murder, prostitution. But now we have all of them. And that is a thing that cuts to the heart.” he truth is that we Jews are not immune to the negative impulses of humanity nor the pitfalls of modern society.
The 21st century Western world is wonderful in many ways, but it does not encourage strong morals. We live in a culture that tends to be opportunistic, narcissistic and with no boundaries. We grow up wanting to “have it all.” We are from the ME generation, and we frequently hear sayings like “what others don’t know, won’t hurt them” and “just do it.”
Our religion teaches that all people have both a yetzer hara and a yetzer ha tov — bad and good impulses. And we are constantly choosing between them. Being part of a religion does not in and of itself, unfortunately, immunize us from poor choices. Still I believe religion can help us to make better choices. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has said it so well: He teaches:
The goal of all spiritual life is to get your ego out of the way — outwit the sucker, dissolve it, shoot it, kill it. Silence the incessant planning, organizing, running, manipulating, possessing and processing that are the ineluctable redoubts of the ego. Not because these activities are bad or wrong or even narcissistic — indeed they are indispensible to living … but because they preclude awareness of the Divine. To paraphrase the Talmud, God says “there ain’t room enough in this here world for your ego and Me. You pick.”
He goes on to say “I now suspect that the real reason for religion is to help you keep your ego under control. And the principal strategy for accomplishing this is to acknowledge the reality of an even more important ego, the source of your ego, the source of everyone’s ego, a source into whom you might safely deposit and then dissolve your ego — with the natural but of course unguaranteeable hope that it might be returned to you. (p. xi-xii “I’m God You’re Not”)
Rabbi Kushner then talks about the first two of the Ten Commandments: (1)I am the Lord your God and (2)You shall have no other gods before Me. He says “on closer examination these two utterances turn out to be the flip sides of one another. You take one, you get the other. … If God is God, then there can be no others. … it is as if God gets us all together at the foot of the mountain and says ‘I’ve got two things to tell you: I’m God, you’re not.’ Indeed it seems to me, we might distill the entire Torah down to that life changing but fleeting realization. The Torah is the story of what happens to people when they forget about that and when they remember it again: “I’m God, you’re not.”
Congressman Weiner belongs to a Conservative synagogue in Queens — but I wonder how much he was thinking of the lessons he learned there when he was sending explicit text messages. Being a congressman must be a very heady position. It would be easy to think — I can do whatever I want to. I am in charge. Aren’t I cool? It’s all about me … exactly the opposite of the mindset Rabbi Kushner talks about. Gone is self effacement, concern for one’s spouse, thoughts of what would be a Godly way to act.
In Judaism, sexuality, eating, drinking — all these very earthy activities — are neither innately good nor bad. It depends on the way in which we do them. We can elevate our sexuality, for example, to a holy act. In our faith, sexuality is seen as a blessing from God as long as it is practiced in the right context. As long as it is about sharing love and commitment and not just thinking about satisfying one’s own desires.
Long ago in a Jewish text called Pirke Avot — Sayings of the Fathers — a rabbi asks the question: who is powerful? And the answer given there is “One who subdues his impulses.” “I’m God, You are not.” One of the most difficult things to do is to turn away from the seductions of our time or of any time. But in Judaism we believe this is part of the learning we are to do in life. We need to work hard to control the impulses we have that are not godly.
If we take the “I’m God, you’re not” perspective then we can no longer say — as long as I get away with it anything is fine. Why? Because we know what is wrong. And rather than just making ourselves happy, we need to try to do what will make God happy.
That is why Judaism is about mindfulness. When we say the Shema at night we remind ourselves to try to live by God’s guidelines. When we come to synagogue and pray or study — we often ask what would God want us to do? When we say the motzi — the prayer over our bread — we can use that as an opportunity to both thank God for our food and think how God wants us to use the energy that food gives us. That mindfulness can help us to make good decisions.
Religion does not cure one of wrong urges. There is no such inoculation anywhere. But it can help one to remember holy limits. It does keep before our eyes a vision of the world we would like to live in and help create. It reminds us that no matter what our culture says, life is not all about us.
Is religion the opiate of the masses? Does it control us and make us sheep. I don’t think so. Rather it can be exactly the opposite. It has the ability to wake us up to our best selves!
Rabbi Debbie Stiel originally presented this column as a sermon on June 17, 2011.
